Chapter and Metaverse
Technology companies around the world are investing incredible amounts of money to develop engaging virtual reality worlds in the metaverse, and many have identified live music performance as integral to their plans. Here, IQ profiles 20 companies to keep an eye on as live concerts in the metaverse become more common.
DecentRaland
Touting itself as “the first fully decentralised virtual world,” Decentraland’s remit from day one was to hand over control to the people who create and play in its virtual space. Through its DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation), users are in control of the policies created to determine how this VR world behaves: for example, what kinds of wearable items are allowed, moderation of content, land policy and auctions, among others. The organisation has a calendar of music events, including the DCL Music Metaverse Festival on 10 November.
Decentraland.org
AmazeVR
AmazeVR claims to be “ushering in the next stage of music.” Through its proprietary camera technology and software, the company produces virtual reality (VR) concerts, creating entirely new musical experiences that bring fans closer to artists than ever before.
Most fans of music don’t have the luxury of seeing their favourite artists in concert for a myriad of reasons – schedule conflicts, geographic location, or financial burden, to name a few. However, AmazeVR concerts offer the immersive experience of seeing your favourite artist up close and personal, even from home. The company’s goal is to allow fans to be able to experience their favourite artists anytime, anywhere.
The platform captivated fans earlier this year with the first-ever VR concert tour featuring Megan Thee Stallion in her Enter Thee Hottieverse tour across 15 major cities in the US with over 15,000 concertgoers. Moving forward, these VR concerts will be accessible online, and the developers envision them be- coming a key component of all artists’ release strategies and album rollouts, setting a new paradigm for both artists and their fans beyond the existing live, in-person concerts.
With the VR market topping nearly 15 million active users in the Meta Quest ecosystem alone, artists can expect even more diverse opportunities to reach their fans via VR and the metaverse and build their brand through exclusive online interactive events, digital merchandising, and revenue sharing from VR app marketplace activity.
AmazeVR is preparing to launch its music metaverse service across all major VR app stores in the first half of 2023 with a line-up of established and emerging artists, both from the US and Korea (through the company’s joint venture with K-pop giant SM Entertainment), including, again, Megan Thee Stallion.
Amazevr.com
Dot Big Bang
With over 2m plays on its main hub and incredible performance in just a browser, dot big bang offers artists a chance to reach fans from across the globe – no matter the technology they own. As long as fans have a browser and an Internet connection, they are able to be a part of dot big bang’s online world and take part in an artist’s performance.
Promoting accessibility above all else, dot big bang offers players an experience they can have anywhere, anytime.
dot big bang is the chosen collaborative platform for 13.4m subscriber YouTuber PrestonPlayz, who has successfully hosted a number of sessions, with his audience jumping into custom games by clicking a link on his social channels. dot big bang offers instant engagement and collaboration all through the click of a link – and no sign-up is required, meaning fans and performers can quickly host and join an event whenever they want.
As a game development platform as well as a collaborative gaming platform, dot big bang can be used to create the perfect venue experience for fans, thanks to its accessible development tools.
You can reach out to dot big bang at [email protected] or via Twitter, Instagram or Discord.
Dotbigbang.com
Epic Games’ Fortnite
With first-of-its-kind music experiences such as Travis Scott’s Astronomical and the Rift Tour Featuring Ariana Grande, Fortnite remains a pioneer in bringing interactive experiences to the virtual space. Since its beginnings, Fortnite has become a coalescence of popular culture – amassing over 400m registered accounts globally – and has continued to expand its reach into music alongside film, fashion, and beyond.
Working with a series of international artists through the Soundwaves Series (finishing this impressive musical line-up with French-Malian singer Aya Nakamura), Fortnite has introduced its worldwide audience of millions to a variety of music from across the globe. Each experience is carefully crafted for each artist through Fortnite’s impressive creative toolset, which places the experience-building capabilities in the hands of any creator or brand that wants to realise their own unique virtual experience.
Fortnite also offers additional ways to discover music through its in-game car radio, playable character outfits (e.g. Silk Sonic and Coachella Cosmetic Sets), Emotes, and Lobby Tracks. UK’s easy life and O2 experience gave fans a brand-new song, exclusively made as an in-game Lobby Track.
Fortnite is available on console, PC, Android, and cloud-based game-streaming services, making it easily accessible to the core fan or casual audience.
Epicgames.com/fortnite
Meta
So confident was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg about the prospects for the metaverse, that he last year rebranded the company as Meta to highlight its shift in direction.
The corporation is investing billions of dollars in the development of the metaverse and has already recognised music as central to engaging users. In addition to launching its own platform for virtual gigs – Horizon Venues – Meta has acquired music VR operations Beat Games and Supernatural, as it looks to secure market share in the environment.
The company recently rolled out its new Meta Quest Pro VR headset, to mixed reviews, while another new function is its Avatar Store, which could have interesting possibilities for virtual merchandise for any artists that choose to use the platform.
Meta.com
Napster
While there are no historic VR gigs on the Napster platform, the company recently hired Roblox music chief Jon Vlassopulos as its CEO and disclosed it has raised an eight-figure sum in new financing, which it will use to fund acquisitions in the Web3 sector, as it looks to follow the Roblox pathway into hosting live music content. Indeed, Vlassopulos has stated that he hopes to make music as popular as Web3 gaming within the next 24 to 36 months.
Napster.com
Niantic
Niantic is the developer of the world’s most successful mobile AR game, Pokémon Go, and is expanding its reach into the live music sector. It’s already run a project with Ed Sheeran in late 2021, while its Lightship software development kit has been used by the likes of Coachella Festival and Warner Music Group. Niantic has also reportedly invested in Pixelynx – another early adopter of Lightship.
Nianticlabs.com
Pixelynx
Pixelynx is a new venture that is focussed on blurring the lines between music, blockchain, and gaming.
Founded by a number of electronic music luminaries, including artists Richie Hawtin (Plastikman) and Joel Zimmerman (deadmau5), Pixelynx is “building technology and acquiring equity in a range of start-ups that will form the foundation of how music is experienced in the metaverse”.
The company says it is building a global network of artists, visionaries, and start-ups that are passionate about re-imagining how the music industry evolves through Web3 and the metaverse. Its goal is to establish a transparent alternative to the metaverse services that are being developed by the “monolithic giants that control the current network of platforms that musicians, fans, and gamers rely on.”
Pixelynx.io
Ristband
Ristband is a music metaverse platform where events taking place in the real world can have a digital twin of the physical world happening in real time, combining the excitement of a live event with the power and reach of digital social experiences.
The Ristband team includes artist Roman Rappack as its chief creative officer. His band, Miro Shot, has experimented extensively with AR, VR, and mixed-reality technology at its concerts for a number of years.
The company is the recipient of a grant from Epic Games, which it is using to help create a metaverse that can be used by independent artists, rather than just the A-list acts that dominate charts and airwaves.
Ristband.co
Roblox
Spearheaded by former global head of music Jon Vlassopulos, gaming platform Roblox has leveraged its global appeal to facilitate a number of album launches and virtual performances, with the likes of Lil Nas X, Tai Verdes, Twenty One Pilots, David Guetta, George Ezra, Charlie XCX, and Lizzo, to name but a few, enjoying various degrees of success with their events.
Roblox has also been embraced by the likes of The Grammys and the BRIT Awards to attract a different audience, while Electric Daisy Carnival pioneered the way for festivals to become involved.
Roblox.com
Sandbox
Built on the blockchain, The Sandbox offers a wide range of exploration across its metaverse, consisting of 166,464 unique pieces of LAND, each belonging to a user. Founded in 2011, it is a community driven platform where creators can monetise Voxel assets and gaming experiences.
Sandbox.game
Snap
Snapchat’s parent company has teamed up with Live Nation to launch AR experiences for the likes of Lollapalooza, Wireless Festival, Rolling Loud, and Electric Daisy Carnival. Say no more.
Snapchat.com
Stageverse
Stageverse is attempting to attract artists and bands to create their own unique virtual environments in the metaverse, providing ‘Stage’ land plots for interested parties that will represent their address in the metaverse. Each individual plot of land has specific coordinates and a listing on the Stage map.
“Stage land plots act primarily as gateways to other expansive spaces via portals, and landowners can personalise and build on their plot in many different ways to promote the ‘front-door’ to their expansive world,” explains the company.
Among the first acts to partner with Stageverse were Muse, who used footage from a 2019 concert to offer fans different viewpoints, as well as various items of virtual merch.
Stageverse.com
Tencent Music
In addition to its investment in Wave, music stream- ing monolith Tencent rolled out a virtual festival called TMELAND last new year. Tapping into the popularity of its karaoke business, the company also announced it was developing a metaverse feature that would give users their own individual rooms where they could invite friends to meet and interact.
The company has also teased the possibility of establishing virtual showrooms that artists could use for the likes of album launches. Tencent has more than 600m users.
Tencentmusic.com
TikTok
While there appear to be no plans for the video-hosting service to develop a metaverse platform, Chinese parent corporation ByteDance has dipped its toe into the market with the 2021 acquisition of VR headset manufacturer, Pico. Watch this space…
Tiktok.com
Unity
A games industry stalwart, Unity is marketing its development platform as an ideal toolkit to create music experiences and earlier this year revealed it had inked a partnership with Insomniac Events, whose festivals include Electric Daisy Carnival and Wonderland. The new partners are apparently working on “a brand-new, persistent metaverse world” specifically for live music.
Unity.com
Vatom
Vatom has been helping artists and brands make their metaverse dreams come true since 2015, and has hosted concerts and meet & greets for artists including Mary J Blige, Macklemore, Ellie Goulding, and Silverstein, as well as global events for brands such as Volvo, and always-on workspaces including Arup Associates.
While most people hear the term ‘metaverse’ and immediately think of a handful of people using avatars to interact in a gaming environment, the Vatom philosophy is different. At Vatom, online gatherings are not just about high-fidelity, they are part of a feature complete ecosystem that is fully scalable to support events with more than 10k attendees. Vatom ‘Spaces’ support digital collectibles, custom avatars, spatial audio, and have a full team of Vatom experts on hand to help your event run smoothly from the box office to the main stage.
Whether you are looking to host your first event and rent one of the venues in Vatom’s Soundtown – everything from the rooftop pool to the recreation of legendary Los Angeles jazz bar, Harvelles – or want to take the next step and build out your own always-on global lounge for your festival, Vatom has your back. If you want to add Smart NFTs, and a custom marketplace to drop virtual merch, they do that, too.
Vatom.com
Volta
Volta is a self-serve XR creation platform that gives artists and creators the ability to design and broadcast experiential content that goes beyond the 2D screen and reaches into the metaverse. Volta integrates seamlessly into artists existing workflows, allowing them to build new immersive worlds that were previously unimaginable. What once required a state-of-the-art production studio and a six-figure budget, is now free.
In the coming months, Volta will be introducing a feature that will enable new forms of engagement and revenue for artists. The company has already built the ability to let fans have an impact on visual content via the chat window in several streaming platforms (Twitch, YouTube, etc.). Fans type in keywords of an artist, choosing to enable one-to-one interactions (“boom” = a futuristic explosion of light); many-to-one interactions (the more people that type “boom” the bigger the explosion when the beat drops); and unified interactions (eg fans can literally play tug of war with the virtual camera angles).
These interactions can be gated by keywords, as well as things like Twitch Bits, YouTube Superchat, etc. So, whether your artists are livestreaming or using Volta on an LED wall at a gig in real life, they can give their fans control of the visual 3D world they are performing in from anywhere on the planet, earning money in the process.
Volta has worked with acts such as Bonobo, Jamie Jones, Nero, Archie Hamilton, Sasha, Patrice Bäumel, TSHA, and DJ Yoda, and it is planning tours with iann dior and Richie Hawtin to name a few.
Volta-xr.com
Wave
Originally known as WaveVR, the company rebranded in 2019 when it became apparent that it would not solely use virtual reality as the lure for fans to enjoy its events.
Wave shows enable artists and fans to collaborate in, what it refers to as “the creation of the most interactive live performance experiences in the world.”
Waves are live, interactive, and immersive shows it promises are unlike any virtual concert that fans have ever experienced – combining the best of live music, gaming, and broadcast technology to transform the live entertainment environment.
The shows can be livestreamed globally on wave.watch, as well as across popular social and gaming platforms including YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, TikTok, Facebook and Roblox.
Chinese online giant Tencent Music is an investor, while artists who have used the platform include The Weeknd, John Legend, Lindsey Stirling, and Justin Bieber.
Wavexr.com
XRSpace
Founded in 2020 by the former CEO of tech specialists HTC, Peter Chou, XRSpace has already brought a 5G VR headset (XRSpace Manova) to the market and launched its own virtual reality headset called the XRSpace Mova. One of the virtual worlds it has created to provide content for that headset is PartyOn – a music event metaverse that offers opportunities from karaoke parties to VR concerts.
Xrspace.io
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Unity’s Peter Moore on reinventing live music
Unity’s Peter Moore has urged the live music business to take advantage of the opportunities of the metaverse in the wake of the company’s partnership with Insomniac Events.
The link-up will see Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) promoter Insomniac team with 3D platform Unity to focus on virtual concerts, promising to bring an “interactive and immersive experience” to music fans.
“Unity is helping us create a world’s first experience for our community as we work together to deliver the next level of what the metaverse can be for entertainment and music,” said Insomniac founder and CEO Pasquale Rotella, upon last week’s announcement.
Liverpool-born Moore was chief executive of Liverpool Football Club from 2017-20 and was previously CEO of video game company Electronic Arts. He has also held senior roles at Reebok, Sega and Microsoft.
“Sport figured out 30-odd years ago that you don’t need to come to the stadium to be able to experience the event itself, and I think music is ripe for that coming out of the pandemic,” Moore tells IQ. “We’ve been working nine months on a virtualisation experience primarily in the festival world. It’s going to take a while to get it right. It’s going to take a while to scale it. But I think we’re going to change that mentality.
“I was president of Sega when they launched the Dreamcast [console] and everybody was going, ‘How are you going to make money out of online gaming?’ And here we are 20-odd years later and online gaming is a $150 billion business. Now look, it’s taken 20 years to get there, and hopefully it doesn’t take 20 years for music, but that’s exactly the journey I think music is on right now.”
Now Unity’s SVP for sports & live entertainment, Moore was central to the return of concerts to Liverpool’s Anfield stadium. The ground welcomed Bon Jovi, Take That and Pink in 2019 and will host 50,000-cap shows by the Rolling Stones, Elton John and the Eagles in 2022.
“If there is a silver lining out of this tragic pandemic, it is that it has accelerated are thinking and acceptance of the digital world”
“In my last year at Liverpool, I got very involved in the music industry and again saw the opportunity at Anfield, so we blew out our stadium exits at outfield to accommodate the concerts,” he says. “I got an insight of the complexity of a physical concert and Pink’s concert, in particular, is a wonderful experience, but it’s so labour-intensive and cost-intensive. We had to shut down our stadium for four days to build it out and then another two days to break down. It’s like, is there a better way of doing it? Or is there a way of having millions of people enjoy that in real time? And that’s what we’re working on.”
Moore cites research by management consulting firm McKinsey & Company that the speed of society’s adoption of technology has multiplied by seven due to Covid-19.
“If there is a silver lining out of this tragic pandemic, it’s that it has accelerated our thinking and acceptance of the digital world,” says Moore. “You’ve got to embrace change. You’ve got to take a look at your customer and figure out what they want and you’ve got to be willing to break away and disrupt your existing business models.
“The legacy of what music is – the back catalogues, the libraries – can all be brought to life in new and innovative ways. It’s in a phenomenal place – as long as it recognises this is an opportunity to yet again reinvent the way that we, as fans, consume that product.”
The California-based exec, who gave a keynote on Next Gen Tech & The Live Entertainment Revolution at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas last weekend, is neighbours with American Idol creator and Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller of XIX Entertainment.
“I’ve always been a huge fan of everything that he’s done to change the music industry,” adds Moore. “And my sampling of my pretty powerful next-door neighbour, is that the music industry is self aware and understands it has to evolve the same as everything else.”
Insomniac brought EDC to the metaverse last October, becoming the first-ever music festival hosted in Roblox. Taking place in a virtual space dubbed the Insomniac World Party, it was held concurrently with the physical festival in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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Insomniac and Unity reveal metaverse partnership
Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) promoter Insomniac Events has partnered with leading 3D platform Unity on a “brand new, persistent metaverse world”.
The link-up, which promises to create “the next generation of live entertainment”, will focus on expanding dance culture from the physical world to the virtual, teaming Insomniac’s vision and creativity with Unity’s cutting-edge technology.
“It is an honour to be partnered with an incredible company like Unity on this new journey,” says Insomniac founder and CEO Pasquale Rotella. “Our vision is to create a social experience in which everyone is a Headliner – where stories and music unite us in discovery, love and a true sense of belonging.
“Unity is helping us create a world’s first experience for our community as we work together to deliver the next level of what the metaverse can be for entertainment and music.”
“Pasquale and his team are revolutionary and always looking to expand their vision”
Unity’s platform creates and operates interactive, real-time 3D (RT3D) content, allowing creators “to make their imaginations come to life”. The company’s SVP and GM of sports and live entertainment Peter Moore will go into more detail about the partnership and what it means for live music during a talk at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas. this Sunday (13 March), which will also feature a video message from Rotella.
“Partnering with Insomniac Events is a fantastic opportunity for us here at Unity,” adds Moore. “Pasquale and his team are revolutionary and always looking to expand their vision and bring extra value to their community. This partnership is the beginning of a long relationship that we believe will usher in a new level of interactive and immersive experiences within the world of live entertainment.”
Insomniac brought EDC to the metaverse last October, becoming the first-ever music festival hosted in Roblox. Taking place in a virtual space dubbed the Insomniac World Party, it was held concurrently with the physical festival in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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